Nelson Mandela:South African Icon Dies at 95

Original story report from New York Times

Mr. Mandela spent 27 years in prison after being convicted of
treason by the white minority government, only to forge a peaceful end to white
rule by negotiating with his captors after his release in 1990. He led the
African National Congress, long a banned liberation movement, to a resounding
electoral victory in 1994, the first fully democratic election in the country’s
history.

Mr. Mandela, who was 95, served just
one term as South Africa’s president and had not been seen in public since
2010, when the nation hosted the soccer World Cup. But his decades in prison
and his insistence on forgiveness over vengeance made him a potent symbol of
the struggle to end this country’s brutally codified system of racial
domination, and of the power of peaceful resolution in even the most
intractable conflicts.

Years after he retreated from public
life, his name still resonated as an emblem of his effort to transcend decades
of racial division and create what South Africans called a Rainbow Nation. Read full story here